Charter Hits

John Kline asked:


Getting Backlinks Naturally

Many backlinks are achieved the natural way. When your website provides users with useful content, webmasters and website owners will often link to these useful web pages (on your site) for their website visitors to use. Most often then not, these sites that link to yours naturally are relevant to your sites content. Also known as “targeted backlinks”, these types of backlinks are the most beneficial when generating quality traffic from them. Getting natural backlinks, however, is a slow process. These are built mostly on trust and gaining trust takes time.

Building Backlinks

One of the acceptable ways of building quality backlinks is listing your site in directories, posting in forums, and submitting to article directories. What you want to avoid is link farms, spam sites or sites that host illegal content, purchasing links in bulk, etc. An easy way to find sites that except these “one-way” link submissions is by using a backlinks finder.

Getting Listed in Directories

Getting listed in directories like DMOZ and Yahoo is a must because this is a way to get some quality backlinks for free and your site is easily noticed by search engines and potential visitors. Generally inclusion in these directories is free but the drawback is that sometimes you have to wait months before you get listed…or not listed at all. Top directories like DMOZ and Yahoo have strict guidlines when submitting, so follow the rules carefully. Yahoo also has a “pay for review” option that is costly and does not mean you will get listed. I would suggest submitting the free listing first, then wait a few months to see if your site is listed before considering the paid option.

Article Directories and Forums

Generally search engines index forums so posting in forums is way great way to get quality backlinks. Join forums with subject matter relevant to your site, add your URL (link) with anchor text of your choice to your forum signature, then contribute to the discussions. Be sure that you abide by the forum rules before you post anything…and do not post just for the backlinks. Forum administrators are not stupid. If your are truly contributing, your posts will not get deleted and you won’t get banned. Also, sometimes administrators do not allow links in posts, unless they are relevant ones, so it is best to leave your link in your signature.

Submitting articles to directories can be more time-consuming then posting in forums. If you can write good articles on subjects related to your site, it’s well worth the backlinks.

Feed them with RSS

Offer free content through RSS feeds to interested sites. When the other site publishes your RSS feeds, you will not only get backlinks to your site, but potentially a lot of visitors. Publishers of the feeds in return get to add relevant content to their site. It’s a “win-win situation”.

Press Releases

Submitting press releases to news sites is another great way to buil backlinks and generate traffic. Write professional press releases about “what’s new” on your site. The dificult part is that you cannot release press releases if there is nothing “newsworthy”.

What to Avoid

Avoid link exchange programs, which offer to “swap” links with unsuspecting website owners. First off, these programs spider email addresses and “spam” website owners with requests. the more you get involved, the more outbound links you have to place on your site that link to pages that link to yours. Search engines frown on this. They are much “smarter” today then they ever were in the past…especially Google. This practice can also get your site banned. It is not natural linking, and search engines know it.

SEO Resources and Articles by Jack asked:


Though there are many different theories out there regarding what makes the best SEO technique, when it comes to some issues that will work against your SEO efforts, there are some issues where everyone agrees. Among these, the most prominent are:

· Not having a web page title

· Using too many graphics, images, or flash animation on a given web page

· Having a menu system that is prohibitively complex

It is extremely important that every web page on your site has a title. Without providing a

descriptive title that is search engine optimization with the right keywords, you’ll not only hurt your ranking, but you’ll turn visitors away. Consider it the equivalent to owning a store without a sign and with blackened windows.

To make sure that you’re doing your best on that level, make certain that each web page on your

site has its own unique title that is specific to its content. Try to make sure that it includes the

primary keyword for that page, to ensure proper SEO for search engine spiders.

By using too many graphics, images, or flash animation, you may be pleasing the eye, but search engine spiders won’t see it the same way. Search engines focus on the text content of your

website. Their spiders crawl through your site looking for text, keywords, and other indications

of purpose.

They cannot, however, understand images or flash animations, nor will they ever understand their appeal. Therefore, though images are great ways to add appeal to your visitor’s adding too much to any given web page, you’re decreasing the value of your search engine optimization.

To reduce this problem, try to create a balance on your page where the text content is given the true priority, and images, graphics, and flash animations are only a compliment, not a focus for the page. You can also help your website by adding alt tags to each of your images so that you are providing the search engine spiders with a bit of text, even when it’s an image that

actually shows up on the page.

The menu system of your website is the key to being able to properly navigate around it. Search engine spiders are typically considered to be relatively basic programs and struggle with anything but the most primitive menu systems.

For example, if your menu involves JavaScript or a Java applet, the search engine spider will not be able to recognize any of the features, and will not be capable of properly navigating the site. Certainly, these can be very appealing to people, but search engine spiders don’t have the same ability to interpret the features of a website as people do.

For proper search engine optimization, a simple textual link is your best option as it is the

easiest for a search engine spider to understand. It makes your site much more likely to be seen in full by the spider, and therefore receive the best indexing and ranking results.

Furthermore, the majority of the time, an extremely complicated menu system can quickly be replicated and implemented using textual links and CSS. This will make an enormous difference in your SEO results, and will be welcomed by all of your visitors who are still using dial-up and other slow connections.

If you must use a complex menu or site navigation system, then make sure that you at least

provide a site map that is readily available via a text link from the home page. This site map

should use text to clearly link to every one of the other pages of your web site. This way, even if a spider is unable to use your regular menu system, it will be able to reach all of the pages by way of the site map.

Refraining from working against your own SEO efforts due to simple errors, and will enjoy

much larger amounts of traffic to your website.

————————————————-

Jack has committed to providing relatively basic SEO Information. Please view SEO Resources to learn how to receive a free e-book and explore the 500 Dollar Internet Marketing Industry.

Regards…

slumlordo asked:


I am paying $900 a month for SEO optimization for a condo a real estate site I have. Am i being hosed. Why is it a monthly fee and not a 1 time fee?

Aaron V asked:


Well, the basic principle of SEO is to generated visitors of one website, right? But it is so lamed to “click here” and “click that” using Social Bookmarking, is there a faster way to generate links using black hat SEO? i am so curious about it.